From The Sunday Times (UK)
June 3, 2007
Audi R8
It’s so comfortable you can run over anything up to a medium-sized fox and not even notice
by Jeremy Clarkson
"We all know what businessmen’s hotels are like. There’s a priority check-in section where you wait behind some rope, on a bit of carpet. There are staff in shiny suits who say things like “If there’s anything else at all for yourself at all”. And you are given a credit card key that makes lots of whirring noises when you put it in the lock but will not, no matter what you do, open the door.
After you’ve kicked it down, you have the room. There’s no obvious button to turn off the fan, which sounds like a Foxbat jet. The light switch by the bed turns all the lights off, except one. Which can only be extinguished by hitting the bulb with your shoe. The plug you need to charge your mobile is always behind the mini bar, and the “tea and coffee making facilities” are designed to ensure you can’t make either.
No, really: the kettle lead is never more than a foot long and the brown powder they put in the sachets is way closer on the periodic table to radium F than it is to coffee.
The restaurant, furnished in beige, is overseen by a woman who says: “Can I get any bread items for yourself at all, sir?” and then hands you over to a 14-year-old Latvian girl who arrived in Britain that morning on the underside of a Eurostar train. Beer is not a word she’s familiar with, which is annoying because it’s what you want most of all in the world.
Your fellow diners are chomping their way through their suppers, some reading books, some newspapers, and there’s always one whose reading the hotel’s smoking policy leaflet over and over again. Just killing time till they can go to their room and watch pornography.
Businessmen’s hotels, I think, are the most miserable, soul destroying, soulless, energy sapping, embarrassing, badly run and badly organised edifices in the entire world. I’d rather stay in an igloo. And that’s before we get to the food.
The menus are always written in a massively squiggly, curly-whirly typeface. And there’s much talk of jus and things being drizzled onto other things. But you know the chef is not from Paris or Rome. He’s from Darlington and he hasn’t a clue what he’s doing.
As a general rule, I order items that even I couldn’t mess up, which is why, at a businessmen’s hotel next to Manchester airport last week, I went for a lamb chump with mashed potato and cabbage. “No, lamb. Lamb,” I said to the Latvian teenager. “A baby baa baa black sheep . . .”
I was expecting something irradiated, something the colour of a camel’s dingleberry and with the texture of a cedar tree. But you know what? It was absolutely brilliant. Historic, as Michael Winner would bark.
I thought it would be impossible to be so pleasantly surprised ever again. But then, as the next day dawned, I found I had to drive back to London in a new Range Rover . . . wait for it . . . diesel.
The Range Rover is a car so ideally suited to a V8 that putting a diesel in the mix completely spoils the point. It’d be like putting diesel on your supper instead of gravy. The worst thing about a diesel is the noise it makes when you start it up. A Range Rover is elegant, dignified, luxurious. And a diesel’s rattle and clatter just don’t go with the look at all. It’s like ringing a sex chat line and being put through to the Duke of Marlborough.
Strangely, however, the Range Rover made almost no noise when I started it, and even less on the move. What’s more, the fuel gauge stayed pretty much where it was on the entire three-hour schlep back to England. That was an even bigger surprise than the hotel’s chump.
But it was nothing to the car that was waiting for me in London. The Audi R8.
I had seen pictures of this mid-engined supercar and they left me underwhelmed. I thought it looked a bit boring, like a slightly bigger version of the TT. And it wasn’t going to be a real supercar, was it? Not when you remember Audi owns Lamborghini. I mean, why make a car to compete with your own brand? That’d be stupid.
This view is reinforced when you climb inside. There are very few supercar extravagances. There’s no panic handle. No stitching made from yellowhammer feathers. No titanium machinegun triggers. It’s very grey, very Audi, very normal. And that’s fine, actually, because there are very few traditional supercar drawbacks either.
You can see out, there’s room for your head, even if you have truly enormous hair, and there’s space for briefcases and whatnot on a shelf behind the seats. It’s big in there; much bigger than you’d believe.
Then you set off and there are no histrionics. The exhaust makes a deep, meaningful rumble, but as is the way in Jaguar’s XK you can’t really hear it when you’re inside.
So it’s spookily quiet, and that’s just the start of it. Because it is also spectacularly comfortable. I don’t mean comfortable . . . for a sports car. I mean it’s so comfortable you can run over anything up to a medium-sized fox and not even notice. Couple this to the usual array of Audi in-car entertainment – sat nav, a hi-fi from Bang & Olufsen no less – and you have a car that, like the Porsche 911, you really could live with every day.
You needn’t even worry about the engine. It’s not a W16 with eight turbos and plugs that foul themselves at every set of lights. It doesn’t run on fertiliser and grated tiger chippings. Instead, it’s the 414bhp 4.2 V8 from the RS 4. I’ve described this as one of the best engines made today and a drive in the R8 has not changed my mind. It does everything, brilliantly.
Of course, you cannot really expect a quiet, comfortable car with the engine from a saloon to perform well on a track. The suspension would be too soft. The power not quite grunty enough. The track is Lambo land. The Audi belongs in a city, soothing the fevered brow of the man with the midlife crisis, while massaging his ego, all at the same time. Wrong. Very, very wrong. In fact the Audi is outstanding when there’s nothing coming the other way. It’s not blisteringly fast. From rest to 120, it goes at almost exactly the same rate as the Porsche 911 Carrera S. And flat out it’ll be out of steam before it gets to 190. But to dismiss it for this is to miss the point.
The four-wheel-drive system affords a huge level of grip, but because it’s been tuned so no more than 30% of the power is ever sent to the front wheels you don’t get the dreary understeer that’s plagued all quattro cars in the past.
You turn in, feel the grip, add power, the rear starts to slide, you apply some opposite lock, balance the throttle and then . . . and then . . . you start to realise you are driving one of the all-time greats. It’s not a hefty car. You don’t manhandle it through the bends. It flows, delicately and precisely.
I don’t think I’ve ever driven a car that works so well on both the road and the track. Even if you remove my natural prejudice against the Porsche 911, I believe the Audi has it licked on all counts. Except perhaps one . . .
The Audi is listed at just under £77,000 and that looks good, but if you want any equipment at all, that shoots up fast. The car I drove, which had a manual gearbox rather than flappy paddles, and normal brakes rather than ceramic discs, still cost a whopping £92,000. Even the leather interior was an optional extra.
But look at it this way. The R8 shares some parts and infrastructure with the Lamborghini Gallardo. And that’s £125,000. Anyone who’s just bought a baby Lambo – me – must be feeling as sick as a dog right now. Because in so many ways the R8 is better. Yes, the Lambo is more exciting, louder and harder. But on the other 363 days of the year, when you just want a nice car . . .
The only problem is that Audi cannot build the R8 fast enough. There are difficulties with making the carbon fibre panels, and as a result it can manage just 20 a day. That’s nowhere near enough to satisfy demand, especially when a more powerful V10 comes on stream next year.
In the meantime I can safely say the R8 is one of the best surprises of my motoring life. It is one of the truly great cars and the only hesitation I have in giving it five stars is that, ideally, I’d like to give it six."
Vital statistics
Model Audi R8
Engine 4163cc, eight cylinders
Power 414bhp @ 7800rpm
Torque 317 lb ft @ 4500rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual
Fuel 19.3mpg (combined cycle)
CO2 349g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 4.6sec
Top speed 187mph
Price £76,825
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Verdict Better than my Lambo
Reader review 1:
"Once in a lifetime you read something and thing Spot On! I agree entirely, they are my thoughts - symbiotic.
Oh that wasn't Mr Clarksons review, it was four years ago when I read a jouno's brief drive of an Audi Le Mans as the R8 was called then. I put a deposit down in February 2003 for the car I was so taken by it. It has been a LONG time coming, but it is due August 2007 and I cannot wait.
I drive it's competitor the Porsche 911 4S, at present and some might say it is liveable with everyday. I would have to say if you do a few miles and they include some quiet Welsh roads, then OK, but for decent mileage, you always arrive shaken, stirred and half deaf.
I cannot wait to drive this newest addition to supercars.
Look out - who will be the next mainstream manufacturer to bravely go where Audi's gone?"
Ken Murray, Manchester, UK
Reader review 2 (an American):
"14-year-old Latvian girl who arrived in Britain that morning on the underside of a Eurostar train"
"As usual, I fall over laughing at these sorts of lines.
The R8 looks wonderful, I hope it comes out in a convertible version (when in Southern California...)"
Gus, Los Angeles, USA / CA
Reader review 3:
"I have to say Mr Clarkson has hit the nail on the head once more. I had the privelidge of drving the R8 around the Boxberg proving grounds in Germany & I agree 100% this is a phenominal piece of engineering genius & by far the best car I have ever had the pleasure to experience. Not only that the build quality & fit & finish is that of large Luxury saloon not the bare bones & wabbly switch gear you'd find in many of the more exotic offerings on the market, it's just a shame I can't afford one, let's see what the V10 is like !!!"
Darren Bodilly, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire
Reader review 4 (An American:
"Still haven't decided what I want to think about the car. One the one hand, its one of the best-looking cars I've seen in person, looking like it just drove off the turntable and out onto the streets. Similarly, its a cheap option to the so-so Gallardo, that frankly makes more sense, but there is still two huge problems in my book:
The Porsche 911 and the Chevrolet Corvette. They are the defacto sports cars of choice in the US, both cost less than the Audi, and depending on what spec you opt for, faster as well. I mean, call me crazy, but I think the $110K asking price (USD) is a bit steep for what you get, Lamborghini techno doo-dads and all.
...But lets face it: When the Z06 is available for $70K, and you can get a pretty nice Carrera S for a little more than $80K, I think I'd take the two cheaper cars. Audi goodness or not.
But what do I know? I'm just some crazy American..."
Brad Y, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Michigan, USA
Last reader:
"Clarkson for King, I say. Or Prime Minister at least. Please..."
Ian Oliver, Singapore, Singapore (COUGH! COUGH!!! PUHLEEESSSEEE!!! - Jeff Lim)
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